They have the power to become any apparent race or gender – they can even conceal many of their Oankali features. Seduction is much easier for the construct ooloi because they can morph into their mates’ ideal of beauty. In Imago, Butler makes gender and race much more "flexible" than in the previous two books, Dawn and Adulthood Rites.
Like its mother Lilith and brother Akin, Jodahs end up becoming the diplomat – negotiating the relationship between humans and Oankali. Aaor finds mates quickly and easily, but the trip nearly ends in catastrophe as the siblings try to protect their humans from the other fearful, hostile, and xenophobic villagers. Without its own mates, Aaor begins to physically dissolve in its hunger and loneliness.Īaor, Jodahs, and its mates decide to go to the fertile resister village in the hopes of finding suitable mates for Aaor. When Jodahs and his mates return to his family’s camp, they find that Aaor, Jodahs’ closest sibling, has started to morph into an ooloi as well. The inhabitants are diseased and deformed due to their inbreeding, but Jodahs repairs and seduces them. Though the Oankali thought they had sterilized all humans on Earth, they clearly missed at least one. Wandering in the woods, Jodahs discovers two human siblings from an unknown settlement of fertile humans.
Beginning to lose its sense of self, it changes erratically to suit its environment. Unable to find mates, Jodahs becomes increasingly isolated and silent – it withdraws from its family. To avoid the possibility of danger, Lilith and her family move to the deep woods to be isolated during Jodahs’ metamorphosis into an adult ooloi, waiting for the possibility that Jodahs may be exiled to the Oankali ship orbiting Earth if it is deemed too dangerous for it to stay. Because of this, it is seen as potentially dangerous – uncontrolled ooloi have the capacity to do massive genetic damage to everything they touch, and an ooloi with a human side poses even greater danger simply because their skills are not fully understood. Jodahs is maturing into the first human-Oankali construct ooloi (a third gender for the alien Oankali). This conclusion to the series focuses on Jodahs, the child of a union between humans and Oankali. Imago is the final book in the “Lilith’s Brood” (or Xenogenesis) trilogy.
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